By Patrick White
I will leave it to others to celebrate the restoration of some public comment to your select board meetings.
For me, not so fast.
This is a board that just stated that they will deign to allow up to five of you (maybe six or seven if you are brief) to speak up to two minutes each for a total of ten minutes per meeting. What if seven or ten or 20 of you take time out of your day to show up?
This is a board so officious it will not engage with its citizens during this speak time.
This is a board worried about a few thousand dollars to format videos so you might know what is going on. That’s about 1/5000th of the taxes we collect from you, or less than $1.50 each. Per year.
This is a board that is ignoring the clear will of the voters when at Town Meeting you voted to keep all meetings on Zoom and available on CTSB so you could be informed of what your leaders are doing, on your schedule, not theirs.
I remind this board that it conducts roughly 23 scheduled meetings a year, and a handful of others such as executive sessions.
I remind this board that between health insurance and compensation, its three members receive between $5,500 and $26,000 each of total compensation, depending on insurance and whether that includes a family plan.
For the highest paid member, that’s over $1,000 per meeting.
The fourth person on the dais, Michael Canales, costs the town nearly $200,000 in overall compensation. We worked closely together for five years. He is excellent at the types of tasks you would expect from a Town Administrator. This includes budgeting, grant applications, and in understanding the myriad bylaws and regulations that affect Stockbridge.
These four folks cost you over $250,000 in taxes each year, and they are telling you how you are limited in interacting with them. Michael, trimming videos is easy. Assign the task of prepping and posting CTSB videos to a staffer. It is not your highest, best use.
This town has 1,900 full-time residents and at least that number of part-time residents, If 5 or 10 or 50 or 100 show up to speak, they should be allowed without a time limit. The problem with a time limit is what many of you observed during the Desisto hearings: The chair was so obsessed with her stopwatch that she didn’t appear to be listening to what the speakers had to say.
Jamie, with what you are paid, if you need to sit there for an extra hour once in a while and listen to your constituents, it’s still a great financial deal as the rest of your meetings average 30 minutes or less.
Precisely because so many of us are elderly and so many of us are only here part-time, I put a return of Public Speak in my email of June 4th that was received by my colleagues with such hostility. From the cheap seats, it appears as if nothing has changed.
You’ve come up with the minimum you could do to try to put this disaster behind you. To many of us, you seem no more committed to listening to your constituents as you’ve been over the past two years. You see this as a burden, not an opportunity to gain insight and perspective.
Yes, the three of you are the biggest fish but please remember, this is a very small pond. Many of the fish know one another and whether you are a big ole’ bass or the tiniest of minnows, we all gotta share the water.
Speaking of fish, it’s no secret that sometimes Carole and I get along swimmingly, and sometimes not so much. But whether when we get along or get annoyed with each other, my position on this subject never changes. When it comes to a free press, we all must have her back. We all must make it clear that we will not stand for our leaders labeling journalism and editorial content as misinformation. If leaders want to correct the record, they are free to write something for Stockbridge Updates. Her issues are open to all who want to contribute. Do not label those who disagree with you as purveyors of misinformation. That may work in Washington, but here in Stockbridge we debate ideas. We will not suffer under a leadership that seeks to malign the character of those with whom we disagree.
